After knowing that they’ve opened a new hypermarket 2 blocks away from my place I thought to pay a visit not only to study the shelf patterns but also to refill my shampoo. Its huge, Its spacious and is having at-least 200 shelves all full. While finding my shampoo I began think how hard it is ever to attract a consumer’s attention. It’s estimated that the average consumer spends less than a second scanning shelves, and in that time, will make a decision on whether or not to purchase any given product!

If you are that product’s manufacturer, you want to make sure that in that critical time frame, I will be drawn to your merchandise, have a desire to pick it up, inspect it, and make a decision to buy it. Whether this is a new product, or a reformulation of an existing one, you’ll be smart to turn to a package designer to ensure that in that important fraction of a second, I will know your product is in here somewhere.

fun fact anyone ? 76% of purchase decisions are made in store.

So coming to packaging design

Oh yeah! So the packaging designer focuses on producing a container that assists in usage of the product, that informs about the product, that tries to get noticed and sell(even in weird ways!). Of-course No matter how beneficial the product inside the container may be, unless a consumer decides to pick it up, that product will never get tested.

But, Wait a sec! is this valid still?

No! because here’s what happening in my country:

According to Google India, there were 35 million online shoppers in India in 2014 Q1 and is expected to cross 100 million mark by end of year 2016.India’s retail market is estimated at $470billion in 2011 and is expected to grow to $675Bn by 2016 and $850Bn by 2020, — estimated CAGR of 7%Indian e-tailing industry is estimated at Rs 3,600 crore (US$800 Mn) in 2011 and estimated to grow to Rs 53,000 Crore ($11.8 Bn) in 2015.With this increasing number of “Screenagers”, and their shopping habits, I scribbled down few notes and would like to share with you.

Till now, the packaging kind of sold the product. Till now, its the marketers magic wand that drove impulsive buyers. But is it same on-line?Motorola did it right when it relaunched its products in India, exclusively on E-commerce sites. The marketers were not only successful in breaking the touch and feel barrier, but also their phones did not shouted in the display shelves in brick-mortar-retail, lost in a hundred other models.

One more beautiful example, Goosebumps an online pickle store aiming at 12,000 crore indian pickle market is successful in conveying their quality in the product without any of their prickles sold in brick-mortar-retail stores.

There are countless cases where the consumer is making a decision to buy even without seeing the package or without the influence of it! No, you got me wrong, I did not say its the end of packaging design.

Surprisingly instead, All I’m trying to say is, this just opened up new frontiers and challenges in the field of packaging design!

Yes! We don’t need to worry about stack-ability and shelf sizes any more, we can just get rid of the annoying smile on that toothpaste package! and focus on delivering true delight to the customers. Are you really not bored with those rectangular cereal boxes? yeah, right!